Recently the Idaho Statesman ran a story (2 online) on business blogging in Boise, here and here. I realize I’m a little late on this, but somethings been bugging me since the story came out.
Several local blogs happily pointed to the story 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I’m sure their were others, but that’s what I found. Ken did a great job on the story; considering what he had to work with.
Fishers and Mobile Data Force, we’re the only two non consulting companies he sited. How many Boise companies, that are not consultants or media, can you name that blog? Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Besides the previous two, here’s what I got: A Plus Benefits, Saguaro Canyon, Technology Law Group, Treetop Technologies and of course HP. There are 40 local blogs I know of, 30 that I subscribe to, and of those maybe 10 that I would consider active (or any good). Mostly it’s a lot of early adopters, consultants and media.
We all know that Boise is about two years behind. Is it finally Boise’s turn to catch up with new media? Or is it still too early? Heck BlueLine’s the only “agency” that blogs. Brian works at Closed Loop, but Id Ad Agencies is his personal blog, MMG has something akin to a blog, but there’s no feed or comments, it’s just a news pop-up. Even with Jamie at the helm, a self profesed new media guy, es/drake doesn’t have a blog.
Maybe I’m missing some. Let me know if there are any Boise business blogs I’m missing, I’d like to know. Maybe John Foster knows.
BTW, here’s my favorite local blogs, not already linked to :
Kinetic Shift
Blogging Expertise
Ready Point Click
KickStart blog
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Thanks for the mention Tac. I’ll admit that I’m new to the Boise blogging scene and I’m way behind on how to leverage this technology for my business, but the thing that stands out in my mind about the local blogging scene is that there are a lot of niche-focus blogs in the Treasure Valley.
One blog I love to read is Idaho Radio News (http://www.idahoradionews.com). I had a brief radio career for six years back in my hometown of Salmon and while I was in college at U of I working for two commercial stations in the Moscow / Pullman area. I love that blog and most of the comments made to the posts are from people in the industry. Trust me, radio people are a weird bunch. It’s very entertaining.
I was a little disappointed in the Statesman articles on business blogging. The angle seemed as though it took a direction of “Hey, here are some people blogging and it’s really not all that it’s cracked up to be.” Read the sub headline to one of the articles - “But determining the return on the investment in online activities has proved elusive at best.”
I’m not sure if the Statesman understands that blogs are not meant to be a mass appeal medium. They are focused on a particular audience and the businesses that maintain blogs and keep their audience in mind are the ones who will see that return on investment somewhere down the road.
I agree Justin. It is the power of blogs that you can focus on a very niche audience, hopefully just the one that cares. I too was a little disappointed in the article. It didn’t say anything the national press hasn’t been saying for well over a year. If blogging is in the mainstream nationally and ken could only come up with the limited examples that he did I wonder if blogging in Boise will ever be more than a handful of us talking to each other.
I’d say the Idaho Ad Agencies blog is more of a pet project than a personal blog. Work-related? In a way. Industry-related? yes. In that sense, I’d say its comparable to the Idaho Radio News blog — and Justin is right, it is a great read.
I have to admit, I wasn’t very impressed with the articles. Seemed to be a “me too” kind of story, i.e. the idea of business blogging was being covered elsewhere, so someone at the Statesman thought they’d better cover it too.
So Brian, the question I have for you and anyone else is why are there no local ad agencies blogging? Aren’t the ad agencies supposed to represent the cutting edge mentality of a city?
Well, Tac, they are…
check out mine at http://cendesic.com/marketing_blog.html
and my partner Jim´s who blogs about the printing world at
http://jimlyonsobservations.blogspot.com/
But we´ve just started…soon Boise will become the worlds Blogging hotspot, I am sure
Oliver
Oliver I linked to your blog in the post and I helped Jim set up his blog a year ago, so I’m aware of it.
The question was geared towards ad agencies. Unless you’re hiding something I don’t think you guys are not an ad agency.
I agree that Boise has a lot of potential, but I’m afraid that Boise will come too late to the party.
BTW Oliver, have you ever tried to subscribe to your own blog? iFraming your blog in like that kills the feed. I had to look at your source code to get the feed.
Hi Tac…we are actually an “agency” because thats the (only) category that traditional businesses understand. When it comes to what we do, all bets are off - obviously
and we help them come into the 21st century.
Thanks for the hint about the feed.
My main blog address is http://oliverfritschblog.cendesic.com/ where the feed works.
The iframing to the main site is just a temporary fix to merge the two with less programming effort. Trouble is, we can barely take a breath and work on our own stuff, because everybody goes away from the big agencies and comes to us now! LOL
Hi Tac,
I heard about your blog from a friend– I’m a recent transplant to southeast Idaho from Utah, so I’m looking to connect with business bloggers in my area & throughout the state…
My blog is at carolynnduncan.com, and I also run a micro-business project at hundreddollarbusiness.com. Is there an aggregate/planet of any Idaho blogs– or could we start one?
Carolyn,
That’s a great idea. There is no aggregate currently. I set out to do something like that a little over a year ago but at that time there wasn’t really enough blogs to do that. Since then I kind of forgot about the idea.
I have been talking with another local blogger about starting up a blogger meet up for the treasure valley, but that doesn’t really help you over in eastern Idaho.